In a week in which the White House Press Secretary stated that Hitler never gassed his own people, it's worth taking a moment to remember the Holocaust. In the U.K., the United Kingdom Holocaust Memorial Foundation and the British Government have enlisted some of the top design firms in the world, including Anish Kapoor and Zaha Hadid Architects, to design a Holocaust Memorial. Kapoor and ZHA's proposal, which places a purposefully awkwardly-sited bronze-cast meteorite partially below ground, is simultaneously disturbing and contemplative.
As the architects explain in their statement, "Meteorites, mountains and stones are often at the centre of places of reflection, especially in the Jewish tradition. They call on the vastness of nature to be a witness to our humanity. A memorial to the Holocaust must be contemplative and silent, such that it evokes our empathy. It must be a promise to future generations that this terrible chapter in human history can never occur again."
In the video below, Anish Kapoor further explains the team's thinking behind the concept:
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"Meteorites, mountains and stones are often at the centre of places of reflection, especially in the Jewish tradition. They call on the vastness of nature to be a witness to our humanity. A memorial to the Holocaust must be contemplative and silent, such that it evokes our empathy. It must be a promise to future generations that this terrible chapter in human history can never occur again."
Hardly poop.
I'm not sure you understand.
do we need more holocaust memorials? especially in the uk, when there are actual concentration camps across the channel?
i think its a beautiful project, but i question how effective the object will function when fully divorced from the memory of place...
How many exist in the UK?
Four, according to Wikipedia
Come on Danger. Two of the four are centers for education, one is connected to war museum, and the last is essentially a plaque. This one is physical space for contemplation.
"Meteorites, mountains and stones are often at the centre of places of reflection, especially in the Jewish tradition"
There is nothing further from truth than this. Enough to know the second of the ten commandments to know the approach of Judaism to idolatry.
Well, London certainly needs more "dark and somber" places as the video suggests. Especially in the winter. Looks like the set of a really bad 1950s Sci-Fi flick. God forbid anyone should turn the corner and celebrate life and transcendence.
An incredibly powerful response to the set brief.
However, something of this nature should be site specific: why not use vantablack/B2 exterior paint for a polemic project outside (or inside) one of the concentration camps used by the Nazi regime to persecute people?
Saying that the interior does lend itself to full dome VR and possibly immersive responses like people of my grandparents generation who stood up to racists and defeated them on the battlefield.
In other words I'm not quite sure this is the correct site for a project of this context.
Dramatic but what does it say? That the Holocaust was an irregularity historically as this is trying to be visually? The stones that Jews leave on gravestones as signifiers of their visit, of not having forgotten the deceased, don't look like this. They tend to be smooth pebbles or small garden rocks, left scattered on the smooth grave podium as multiple separate events of remembrance and respect. There is your design cue.
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